With the publication of Edwin of the Iron Shoes in 1977 a new kind of hard-boiled detective arrived and changed the course of modern detective fiction. Sharon McCone, the private investigator featured in nineteen novels and more than a dozen short stories by Marcia Muller, is the widely acknowledged prototype for a spate of women detectives, including Sara Paretsky's V. I. Warshawski and Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone, both of whom first appeared in 1982. The longevity and popularity of the McCone series attest to the timeliness of McCone's appearance and to Muller's ability to create characters who can evolve with their times in a way that readers continue to care about.

While Muller is a pioneer, McCone is far from the first female detective. Both female and male authors have experimented with detective females since the 1860s. In the 1860s and 1870s in England and America, a few novels featuring...